Some FT reporters have complained about the CEO’s pay

A group of Financial Times reporters have complained about the pay of CEO John Ridding, who earned $3.4 million in 2017, and called for him to give back some of the money, according to a Reuters story.

The Reuters story states, “The FT’s Steve Bird, joint head of the paper’s National Union of Journalists group, wrote to FT editors and journalists across the world, saying Ridding’s pay was absurdly high and that he should give some back to help those on lower salaries.

“FT accounts, filed on July 27, showed that the paper’s highest-paid director, Ridding, earned 2.55 million pounds in 2017. The accounts restated his earnings for 2016 at 2.04 million pounds.

“‘We believe that John Ridding should give back his absurdly large pay increases since 2016 and use the funds to reward all staff, especially those on lower salaries, and to help bridge the gender pay gap,’ Bird wrote in the email dated Aug. 1.

Chris Roush is the Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

This website is operated by Chris Roush, who teaches “Writing and Reporting,” “Business Reporting,” “Economics Reporting,” and “Business and the Media” at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.